There are Reasons for Optimism

Feb 1, 2013

RUSH: Tyler in Lima, Ohio. Hi, Tyler. Great to have you here, sir.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, mega dittos. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Appreciate that.
CALLER: I guess the main line of my call here in Lima, Ohio, is for Governor John Kasich, wanted to give kudos for Kasich. But then more specifically, I wanted to give kudos, I guess, more or less — I know the recovery isn’t quite where we want it to be, but just imagine where we would be without all of these Republican governors since 2010. Every time I hear and I see Kasich on, and specifically he was over in Europe at a conference, I think the end of last year, the beginning of this year, and from what I do know while he was over at the conference he actually got to sit down and talk with several companies basically promoting the state of Ohio and the United States to bring some of their manufacturing over here. When do you ever hear Obama or anyone else making the case for —
RUSH: You don’t. I’ll tell you what this means. This is exactly what I was talking about toward the end of the program yesterday. Some people ask me on the phone (you’ve heard it), “Is it time to panic?” I’ve always said, “I’ll tell you when it’s time to panic,” and in fact, I can’t pinpoint it, but I’m feeling optimistic, and it’s not phony. It’s not wishful thinking. It’s not phony hopefulness. I just have a sense in me that this country is not gone, that the people of this country not gonna put up with this. I don’t know how this is gonna manifest itself.
Obama’s devastating this country. The policies put in place and those that are gonna be put in place are gonna do even more damage. I mean, it’s serious what he’s doing. Did you see this? The IRS announced that the family health care premium, once Obamacare is implemented, is $20,000 a year. You were told your premium was gonna go down $2,500 a year! The average family premium is going to be $20,000 a year. I guarantee you, people didn’t vote for that.
They didn’t think they were voting for that, the ones that voted for Obama, and there are going to be a number of things that wake people up. Now, I don’t know what those people are going to think about it. I wish I could give you more specifics. I can’t. I’m not dreaming. I’m not fantasizing. I just have too much faith in the people of this country. We’re not gonna put up with this. Obama’s not ultimately gonna get away with totally destroying this country. His damage already done is brutal and he’s gonna do more and we’re gonna have an incredible amount of hard work ahead of us.
But your comment about Kasich, the governor of Ohio, that’s where all this resistance is happening, folks. The states! The states is where resistance is opposition to Obamacare is taking place. The states is where tax reform is taking place, starting. The states is where whatever opposition to the latest crisis of the day is, be it health care, immigration, or guns. The states — the majority of which have Republican governors — are where this is all being dealt with, and you’re not hearing about it. They don’t get a lot of press coverage, but that’s where this is happening. I feel good about it, so I like the fact that he called here and wanted to praise Kasich.
These people deserve it.
There are a number of governors and other officials and people at the grassroots level in states all across the country. I mean, you look at California. More and more athletes are coming out, I saw the story, and leaving because of taxes. Liberalism has consequences. It has never worked, folks. It has never worked! It has never fulfilled its promise. Obama has wreaked a lot of damage on this country already, and there will be more. There’s gonna be more to come. He’s devastating. His policies and his presidency are devastating.
But I have this confidence that he’s not gonna succeed in total transforming this country into a Western European socialist democracy where the vast majority of the population just lays down and accepts it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: It’d be interesting to see a calculation of where this economy would be right now without fracking, the new way of getting oil. Other than areas of high-tech, fracking is probably one of the largest areas where concentrated growth in this economy is taking place. There are oil booms in the Dakotas, in North Dakota. They are having to build entire cities, towns, to house employees showing up to work in fracking. The left is trying to shut it down under some claim that it destroys the environment. Natural gas and oil, of course, are the evil twins of opposition to the mainstream environmentalist wacko movement.
But without that, there wouldn’t be any economic activity to speak of, and the governors are resisting every Obama effort to shut it down. Look at the Keystone pipeline! Why not build it? It’s after the election. It’s not gonna harm Obama’s reelection. Why not authorize it? You know, even if there is something to alternative energy, it isn’t gonna be for 20 years! We’re still going to need oil. But guy and the Democrat Party are so religiously opposed to oil, it it’s irresponsible. The Keystone pipeline would add to our domestic supply. It would help us with energy independence. It would help lower fuel prices. Why not do it?
Well, if you’re Obama there are specific reasons why you don’t want to do it, and you’ve heard ’em all before.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I mentioned in the last hour and I mentioned yesterday, too… I can’t give you specifics. It’s just a feeling — and I assure you, it’s not just blind hopefulness. It isn’t wishful thinking. I just have a sense that Obama’s not going to ultimately succeed in totally transforming this country into something other than how it was founded. Now, I’m not denying what he’s done so far has been devastating, but there are signs out there.
I keep talking about the states. In addition to fracking, do you know what else is booming? Fracking would be probably number one, and it’s the most unreported characteristic that is responsible for economic growth. There literally is a boom in the oil industry in this country where fracking is taking place. The other thing that is growing this economy is the manufacture and sale of guns, and you know that.
You may not have put it in proper context, but you have seen all the stories about people lining up, buying guns and ammo left and right. That has a profound economic impact. Then you hear 8.5 million jobs vanished. The labor force participation rate? We’ve lost 8.5 million jobs since Barack Obama took office — and, sadly, that’s not by accident. Sadly, it’s not a quirk of fate.
They may talk today about 157,000 new jobs were created last month. Guess what? Well, 169,000 people left the labor force. So we have a net loss when it comes to jobs. That’s why the unemployment rate went up to 7.9%. Then there’s this. I had this story late in the day yesterday. It’s from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. It’s another poll, but this one actually has good news in it.
“As Barack Obama begins his second term in office, trust in the federal government remains mired near a historic low, while frustration with government remains high.” Now, I know what you’re saying. “Wait a minute, Rush! What do you mean, ‘trust in the federal government remains mired near a historic low, while frustration with government remains high’? We just reelected a guy who’s promising more and more government!”
I know. It seems like cognitive dissonance. Maybe it’s worse. Maybe a lot of people are willing to give up their rights for government freebies. You know, you cannot underestimate — and I did, by the way. But I’m never making this mistake again. I feel a little chagrined that I made this mistake in the last campaign. When Obama was running these ads that were accusing Romney of essentially murdering some guy’s wife, my reaction privately to myself and here on the radio, too, was:
“Nobody’s gonna believe that. That’s so outrageous to say about Romney. It’s silly.” I was wrong. People, even if they didn’t believe it specifically, it worked in combination with everything else Obama was doing in terms of trying to define Romney. The dog in the cage on the roof of the station wagon on the family vacation, all the “hidden money” in the Caymans and Swiss bank accounts.
The fact of the matter is, Obama and the Democrats did a number on Mitt Romney’s reputation and his character and his image with outrageous commercials that I thought nobody in their right mind was gonna believe. I know they’re gonna appeal to somebody, but they appeal to far more. People may not have believed it specifically, but it did enough damage to make people say, “I don’t know. I just don’t like this Romney guy. Stick with what we got.”
I think there were a lot of people with their hands in the air in that election just gave up. You know, Obama’s vote totals were down from 2008. The Republican vote totals were down from 2008. In fact, there were three or four million people, Republicans, who did not vote in 2012, who did in 2008. If they’d shown up, we’d be talking about an entirely different future today, and it would be dramatically, positively different.
But there was no robust endorsement of Barack Obama and his policies in the 2012 election. Look at the inauguration crowds. They were down by half. The exuberance, the excitement, the near cultlike status Obama had in 2008? That’s gone. He’s not that messianic figure anymore. But still people voted for him. I think, looking back on it now with what we know now, there are some reasons for it.
They may not make a whole lot of sense, but they are still reasons, and I think they did a good enough job of Romney’s reputation that people said, “Ah, the hell with it! I don’t like that guy. He’s a rich Republican. He doesn’t care about me.” Look at the exit poll data. “Cares about people like me?” Obama, 81% agree; 19% agree with Romney. All of that is the negative ad campaign that Obama ran that the Romney people didn’t respond to ’cause they didn’t think it would stick, either.
Nobody in their right mind would think an ad accusing a candidate of committing murder would stick! So you got this poll from Pew, which says that “trust in the federal government remains mired near a historic low, while frustration with government remains high,” and yet the guy responsible for both of those got reelected. It’s enough to make you pull whatever hair you have left out.
Also according to the poll: “And for the first time, a majority of the public says that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms.” That is excellent news. It’s surprising to me that it’s the first time most people realize this, but I’ll take it. And I’ll tell you why. It’s about guns, and it’s about contraception. It’s about the Catholic Church. It’s about religious freedom. People are noticing.
You circle back and say, “Yeah, but Obama still won.”
Yeah. That still remains largely inexplicable. But it doesn’t change the results of the poll. It doesn’t change it. In fact, it reinforces my gut instinct here. Now, I don’t think that all of us just sittings around waiting for something to happen is what’s gonna effect change. Don’t misunderstand. There are all kinds of people as I mentioned that I working to stop what’s happening and to reverse course.
You don’t hear about them, but they’re out there. Governors, people in the states, average Americans. “The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, conducted Jan. 9-13 among 1,502 adults, finds that 53% think that the federal government threatens their own personal rights and freedoms,” I’d actually like it higher but I’ll take the 53%, “while 43% disagree. …
“The growing view that the federal government threatens personal rights and freedoms has been led by conservative Republicans. Currently 76% of conservative Republicans say that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms and 54% describe the government as a Â“majorÂ” threat. Three years ago, 62% of conservative Republicans said the government was a threat to their freedom; 47% said it was a major threat.”
Three years ago, it was 62% of conservatives. Now it’s 76%. While 47% said it was a major threat, as opposed to 54%. There hadn’t been much change among Democrats, 38% to 38%, but most of this 38% still vote for more government, which tell you this how much they value their rights, despite all their lip service to civil liberty. They just want the free stuff. I mean, there’s 38% that we can count on for voting for Santa Claus.
That’s what the poll tells us.
But it’s not 47%, at least according to this polling data.